Mark Bennett Opinion

Search Results

Close Previous Now showing: of Next

Previous Next Close

Discussion

Welcome to our online comments feature. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including unpopular ones. We ask only that you keep the conversation civil and clean. We reserve the right to remove comments that are obscene, racist or abusive and statements that are false or unverifiable as well as posts that are attacking other users. Repeat offenders will be blocked. You may flag objectionable comments for review by a moderator.

comments powered by Disqus

February 5, 2012

MARK BENNETT: Toxic victories

Political atmosphere elevates ideological battles over truly pressing issues

Mark Bennett The Tribune-Star The Tribune Star Sun Feb 05, 2012, 05:02 AM EST

When the Super Bowl ends tonight in Indianapolis, most of the Giants and Patriots will shake hands, despite their competitive fire, win or lose.

Oh, some dejected receiver or jubilant linebacker might get in one last dig, but the adults among them will make peace, knowing they’re all pretty much in the same boat.

But if the game pitted the Republicans against the Democrats, they’d bypass such camaraderie. In fact, their duel would go beyond those 60 minutes on the Lucas Oil Stadium turf. They’d be forming strategies to disrupt traffic at the other’s home games next season, extend tax breaks to everyone but the opponent’s season-ticket holders, add a surtax on any local purchase of the rival club’s memorabilia (and require a photo ID), and run TV ads insinuating that anyone wearing the foe’s team colors is un-American.

Divide. Conquer. Maim. At all costs. Don’t just score more touchdowns; force the other franchise into bankruptcy.

Yes, these days, it’s doubtful lawmakers would prioritize any idea that doesn’t represent a wounding, moral defeat for their political opponents. Compromise and the public good have been abandoned in favor of racking up ideological victories. The result isn’t merely maddening for average people who want to live in peace and prosperity. The extremism neglects broader progress on issues with fewer clear winners and losers.

The annual Groundhog Day Economic Forecast breakfast Thursday morning at Indiana State University gave a large crowd of Terre Haute business and industry leaders, managers and employees a state-of-the-economy view from several guest speakers. Each gave helpful explanations of the positives and negatives behind statistics on gross domestic product, median housing prices, and the consumer and business confidence indexes. There were signs of hope, including locally through an expansion at ThyssenKrupp Presta and the purchase of the old Pfizer plant by pharmaceutical maker NantWorks.

As ISU economist Robert Guell closed his forecast for a “fair” 2012 economically, he added a brief but frank commentary.

Emphasizing that he is “a pro-business, establishment Republican,” Guell criticized “toxic politics and the impact on economics.” He zeroed in on his party’s drive to enact the immensely contentious right-to-work law, with the backing of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. The majority Republicans in the Indiana House and Senate made their top priority a piece of legislation with, as Guell put it, an “only marginal” upside for business. The law, passed last week by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Mitch Daniels, makes Indiana the only state in the industrial Midwest to prohibit labor unions from collecting mandatory representation fees from workers. As Guell pointed out, “private employment in Indiana in closed shops is less than one-tenth of that employment.”

The Republicans’ focus on winning that political battle may inspire a backlash that could jeopardize the party’s hold on both chambers of the General Assembly and the governor’s seat through the November election. “Every labor union dollar in the country that is not pointed at Wisconsin is going to be pointed at Indiana and electing representatives (and perhaps a governor) sympathetic to labor rather than business,” Guell told the crowd.

The prioritization of right-to-work was also costly to the state overall, Guell said, “because instead of focusing on fixing, in a permanent way, the unfunded public pension liability problem, or the unemployment insurance problem, the entire political capital of business was devoted to a cause of insignificant consequence that will only spoil the political environment.

“I say this as a failed politician who was soundly booed at the [local] labor hall,” he added, referring to his unsuccessful bid for the District 2 City Council seat in 2007. “I am a pro-business, establishment Republican who (like our governor once thought) would have left well enough alone” concerning right-to-work.

The two less-prioritized situations Guell mentioned are not small, and affect Hoosier workers, employers and taxpayers. The state’s unfunded public pension liabilities for its pre-1996 Teachers Retirement Fund total approximately $11 billion, according to the governor’s office, and will take 20 to 25 years to pay off. Also, like many states, Indiana owes the federal government a debt of about $2 billion for covering unemployment insurance paid to Hoosier workers.

From a fiscal standpoint, those two complex issues seem more verifiably pressing and significant. But that’s not how things work (or don’t work) in the Statehouse or in Congress.

“We have forgotten in the country that politics is about joint progress and not just about winning,” Guell concluded. “Winning at all costs has become an economically costly activity. Measured in terms of opportunity costs, it is what the state could have accomplished with a joint effort focused on serious problems. As long as this type of behavior is at the center of our state and national politics, we will all be stuck in the mud for a very long time while our debt and unfunded Social Security, Medicare and pension issues grow out of control.”

Democrats in Washington were just as guilty of one-sided tactics in passage of the national health-care act, Guell said moments after his address.

So, is this dysfunctional government destined to just go on and on?

“Somebody,” Guell said, “is going to have to come to the conclusion that winning isn’t enough.”

Until then, we’ll keep our chinstraps buckled.



Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.

Text Only | Photo Reprints

Copyright 2012 News From Terre Haute, Indiana. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mark Bennett Opinion

• MARK BENNETT: Roadway Role Models: Adults need to remember habits often rub off on teens

  Plenty of dads connected with a car ad that first aired on TV two years ago.

  May 20, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Farmers using no-till and cover crops doing their part to keep soil healthy

  Earth Day typically features community cleanups, and discussions of air and water pollution. All deserve the attention.

  April 22, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Lyrical legacy

  Traditions begin, end, revive and evolve.

  April 15, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: GOP campaign fireworks could fizzle for Hoosiers once again

  Of all the United States, Indiana deserves to experience Republican-on-Republican presidential attack-ad mania.

  April 1, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Hard hit: Cash rewards for game-ending hits on NFL players are not a part of the game

  The moaning and whining miss the point.

  March 25, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Vigo County native helping relief agency provide physical, spiritual aid to Japan in wake of last year’s devastation

  Help can be harder to receive than give.

  March 11, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Perception of Wabash River’s water quality doesn’t always match reality

  People like chocolate milk. In a glass. Fresh from the fridge.

  March 4, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Filling a Need: Vigo County YMCA expected to open this spring

  Comebacks inspire hope. They also require lots of work.

  February 26, 2012 2 Photos  

• MARK BENNETT: Favorable images

  Movie critics take a lot of criticism.

  February 19, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Toxic victories

  When the Super Bowl ends tonight in Indianapolis, most of the Giants and Patriots will shake hands, despite their competitive fire, win or lose.

  February 5, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Indianapolis will be on display for the nation with the Super Bowl coming to town

  Someone immersed in a crash diet to make a smashing impression at a class reunion may get the desired effect.

  January 22, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Patiently waiting for Indiana's primary

  While standing in a check-in line at Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome a few years ago, I watched an Italian woman walk past dozens of more patient travelers to grab a spot up front.

  January 8, 2012  

• MARK BENNETT: Processing postal change

  You probably know one of those 10,026.

  December 11, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: Multiple choice question: Voters must choose which direction they want the future of education to go

  There was a time when few Hoosiers outside of education circles could name the state superintendent of public instruction.

  December 4, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: With an historic election behind Terre Haute, it’s time to look at the future’s possibilities

  Everybody knows their “woulda, coulda, shoulda” moments.

  November 13, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: Economic forecast: Things looking up but don’t expect ‘much of a dent in unemployment’

  Outside the Columbia Club, the atmosphere matched the picture of 2012 painted by a panel of economists for an audience of business people gathered inside that ritzy building on Monument Circle in Indianapolis.

  November 6, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: Students who reach for a college education too often are buried under a pile of debt

  Right now, millions of college graduates are wondering whether their education was worth the effort.
  That doubt hurts the country.

  October 30, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: Tangier’s festival volunteers keep past alive for future

  Traditions stay alive only as long as the people who hold them dear.
  Small towns have that same life expectancy.

  October 23, 2011 8 Photos  

• MARK BENNETT: Made in the USA? A political T-shirt faux pas

  The most rational statement about a small furor in the U.S. Senate campaign was uttered by a tea party organizer.

  October 9, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: Daniels goes where a candidate probably won’t in new book

  Some things simply won’t get said on the political campaign trail.

  September 25, 2011 2 Photos  

• MARK BENNETT: Time waits for no Manning

  Sad, disappointed and uncertain. Colts fans feel all of those.

  September 18, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: Value of every minute deeply realized on 9/11 (related VIDEO)

  Editor’s Note
  This summer, the Tribune-Star’s Mark Bennett visited New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., sites where the terror attacks of Sept. 11,  2001, are now memorialized. He observed the cityscapes and landscapes forever changed by the events of that day and talked with people he encountered there, many of whom witnessed the attacks and their aftermath from close range and had personal ties to its victims.

  September 11, 2011 4 Photos 1 Video  

• MARK BENNETT: As school begins, carve out daily time

  By now, most back-to-school checklists are tattered and creased.

  August 14, 2011 1 Photo  

• MARK BENNETT: Movie scene shows Terre Haute accepting Debs' role in its history

  You stay classy, Terre Haute.

  August 7, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: Community outpouring represents collective sympathy for fallen officer

  Every Terre Haute resident has probably been asked the same question.
  “Why do you live there?”

  July 17, 2011 1 Photo  

• MARK BENNETT: Declaration of cursive’s death reminiscent of ’70s metric-conversion mania

  When the state of Indiana announced it would no longer require schools to teach cursive handwriting, I was LOL.

  July 10, 2011 3 Photos  

• MARK BENNETT: On Fourth of July, remember, too, those we depend on

  A spatula in one hand, a cool beverage in the other, and a stash of bottle rockets in a plastic sack in the garage.

  July 3, 2011  

• MARK BENNETT: Get out and see what the Valley has to offer

  Maybe you drive the same route to work every day. Shortest route. Saves time and a few dimes worth of gas.

  June 26, 2011 1 Photo  

• MARK BENNETT: Walking the fine bipartisan line

  Lugar’s occasional departures from hard-line conservatism have put his six-term Senate position in jeopardy.

  June 12, 2011 1 Photo  

• MARK BENNETT: Terre Haute man receives kidney from younger brother

  The act of giving often triggers an instant calculation of loss.

  June 5, 2011 1 Photo  

• More Mark Bennett Opinion Headlines

© 2012 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. · CNHI Classified Advertising Network · CNHI News Service
Associated Press content © 2012. All rights reserved. AP content may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Our site is powered by Zope. Some parts of our site may require you to download the Flash Player Plugin.
Privacy Policy | AP News Registry privacy policy
Terms and Conditions
Advertiser Index

Events by eviesays.com

News From Terre Haute, Indiana 222 S 7th St Terre Haute, IN 47807